The Government's plans to subject school children to random drug testing is immoral, intolerable, and a further ominous step toward a police state says the Libertarian Alliance, the radical free market and civil liberties think tank and pressure group.

Libertarian Alliance Director, Dr Chris Tame commented:

"The insane and unwinnable war against drugs has already substantially undermined civil liberties in Britain, being used to justify asset forfeiture, the abandonment of the common law rule of the presumption of innocence, the destruction of financial privacy and the establishment of intrusive state surveillance. The government's latest proposal is yet another step on the road to a full police state in this country.

The lesson that our vulnerable and impressionable children will be taught by this horrendous measure is that their bodies and lives are not there own, that they are wards of the state, and that they may be inspected, abused - effectively raped - by the state - in other words, that they are serfs, not citizens.

It cannot even be argued that this measure will actually decrease drug consumption. The State is unable to keep drugs out of high security prisons, the ranks of its own armed forces, or the members of its own Cabinet. And in a country in which state schools are barely able to impart the "three Rs" to their inmates, one would have thought that they might do well to confine their concerns to this apparently difficult task."

Dr Sean Gabb is the Director of the Libertarian Alliance. He is the author of ten novels and ten other books, plus about a million words of journalism. He can be contacted for further comment on 07956 472 199 or by email at sean@libertarian.co.uk

His latest novel, The Break, has been nominated for the 2015 Prometheus Award.

Or another of his books, Smoking, Class and the Legitimation of Power, explains how the current "war" on smoking has nothing to do with making individuals healthy, but everything to do with enhancing the power of a totalitarian ruling class, and enriching its relevant client groups.

The Libertarian Alliance is Britain's most radical free market and civil liberties policy institute. It has published over 800 articles, pamphlets and books in support of freedom and against statism in all its forms. These are freely available at http://www.libertarian.co.uk